


Before You Come in Here With Some Kinda Attitude, You Better Read the House Rules

by ignipes



Category: Supernatural
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-05-20
Updated: 2006-05-20
Packaged: 2017-10-03 05:10:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignipes/pseuds/ignipes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean, being the caring and responsible older brother that he is, took Sam out drinking for the first time. It was the best night ever, or maybe the worst, depending on which of them you ask.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Before You Come in Here With Some Kinda Attitude, You Better Read the House Rules

Dean opened the door quietly. The morning sun slanted through the blinds, casting stripes of light and shadow across the motionless lump on the bed. A deep rumble filled the room, not unlike an approaching thunderstorm or an indigestive bear. Five toes peeked out from the blanket at the foot of the bed, and at the other end a mess of dark hair was half-hidden beneath the pillow.

It was a very peaceful sight.

Almost cute, Dean thought.

He leaned down, picked up a muddy sneaker, and hurled it at the bed as hard as he could.

"Rise and shine, bitch. It's your turn to mow the lawn."

The lump on the bed gave a strangled yelp, followed by a long, dramatic groan. A single hand emerged from beneath the blanket, and a single finger gave Dean a friendly good-morning wave.

"Hey, watch your language." Dean leaned down and picked up the other sneaker. "I don't make the rules, I just enforce them."

He wound up again but stopped mid-pitch, balancing easily, when the lump spoke.

"Don't you dare."

"Sammy! I didn't know you were awake."

"Fuck off."

"Dad called. Said he'll be back tonight, and he knows he doesn't have to remind you to mow the lawn again because you didn't forget again."

The lump began to move, shifting around and undulating. "It's too late. I'm dying. I'll be gone by the time he gets home."

"Feeling a little under the weather this morning?"

"This is your fault, asshole. I blame you for everything. Tell Dad that it was all your fault."

The lump was still moving. Dean watched in fascination; hands and feet and parts of limbs poked out here and there, but it honestly looked like Sam had no idea how to find his way out from under the blanket.

"That's my dying wish," Sam's sepulchral voice continued. "That Dad knows that everything that ever happened in our entire lives, starting with that thing with the bubble gum and the bathroom door when I was five, right up until today, it's all your fault."

Dean rolled his eyes and dropped the shoe on the floor. "Spare me the soliloquy, drama queen."

Finally, two hands gripped the edge of the comforter and shoved it down. Sam's face emerged -- smeared with lipstick, stamped with red wrinkle lines, topped by hair that looked like it was stolen from a dead hedgehog -- somehow managing to both squint painfully and glare pissily.

"You don't even know what the word 'soliloquy' means."

"It means you're bitching but nobody cares." Dean walked across the room to the window. "Seriously, dude, it's going to be hotter than hell out there today. The longer you wait, the more painful it's going to be." He snapped up the blinds, welcoming the brilliant sunlight into the room.

Sam threw him arm over his face and rolled over. "God, you're a jerk. Go away and leave me--" Sam stopped suddenly and sat up, swaying unsteadily. "Uh. Huh."

Dean took two rapid steps back. "You barf it up, you clean it up."

"Says who?"

"Says me. New rule."

Sam took a few deep breaths and swallowed, then rubbed his hand over his face, spreading the garish lipstick across his nose. "I hate you," he said.

"Aw, c'mon, didn't you have at least a little fun?"

"No."

Slowly, Dean began to smile. "Do you even remember what happened last night?"

The floor between Sam's feet suddenly required his undivided attention.

"Any of it?"

Sam looked up from under a messy fringe of hair, his expression one of naked panic, then dove under the comforter again, pulling it up over his head.

"Oh, _god_! I'm going to _die_."

Dean nodded enthusiastically. "Good night, wasn't it?

In a slightly less hysterical but infinitely more sinister tone, Sam added, "And then I'm going to kill _you_."

"Aw, don't be like that." Dean sat down on the other bed, resting his elbows on his knees. "That was one for the record books, Sammy. There'll never be another night like it."

"I can only hope."

"Though, I gotta say, I think there were some aspects of the evening that could be improved."

Sam peeked out from under the blanket again. "Like what, Dean?" he asked, his voice bright with innocence. "Was it the way we almost got our asses kicked by a couple of guys named Tex and Slim? Was it the exciting things the manager was threatening to do with that pool cue? Was it the unforgettable feeling of a bar stool being smashed over your head? Was it those...um..."

Maybe it was just because the room was damn hot, or maybe it was the smeared lipstick, but Sammy's cheeks were looking a little bit red.

"Those lovely ladies?" Dean prompted, nodding solemnly. "Yes, there were some problems in how you handled that, but before we get to that, let's start at the beginning, with the approach."

"With the _approach_?" Sam stared at Dean incredulously, eyebrows and lips and nose and even his ears getting into the action of expressing his scrunched-faced disbelief. "You sound like Dad, talking about a job."

"That's because this is just as important." Dean ignored the roll of Sam's eyes and went on, holding up his index finger. "First rule: if there's a three-hundred pound guy named Bubba working as a bouncer at the door, you do _not_, under any circumstances, mention that you're only seventeen and worried about your fake ID, not while you're anywhere within five hundred feet of the establishment."

Sam bit his lip, obviously wanting to argue, but only grumbled, "It doesn't look like me at _all_. Besides, he didn't hear us."

"He could have, and then Bubba would've sat on your head and it _really_ wouldn't have looked like you." Dean held up a second finger, waving it sternly at Sam. "Second rule: do not, under any circumstances, complain about the taste of the beer or mention that the bartender looks like a ghoul."

"It tasted like horse piss," Sam countered sourly. "And he did look like a ghoul."

"And he totally heard you say that. He probably spat in your beer." Dean waited patiently while Sam made a disgusted face, put his hand to his mouth, and swallowed quickly. "Third rule: when you see that the woman you're talking to has a tattoo that says 'Property of Jethro the Man', you stop flirting immediately."

"I wasn't flirting!" Sam's voice rose alarmingly with the protest, and he bolted upright, kicking the covers back. "I didn't even want to talk to her! She was...she had...she was _old_."

Someday, Dean thought, he was going to have to give Sam a good talking-to about the many fine qualities of older women, but he knew that now was not the time. A tattooed, raspy-voiced, chain-smoking, faked-tanned, turquoise-bedecked, whiskey-downing, Jethro-dating woman doused in enough hairspray and perfume to go up like a hundred-year-old zombie at a single spark was not the best example to use.

"Sammy, you'd only had two beers. No way you were drunk enough to be leaning and...and giggling and...whatever you were doing...if it wasn't on purpose."

Sam looked down at the floor again, concentrating on the task of trying to pick up a pair of dirty socks with his toes.

"Oh, my god." Dean opened his mouth and closed it several times. "You _were_ already drunk. I thought...I thought you were just being an idiot. _Two_ beers? _Two?_" He looked up at the ceiling in disbelief, hoping for divine intervention on behalf of the gods of Dear Lord, Tell Me My Family Isn't This Lame. If two beers had him drooling and cooing over Property of Jethro, it was no wonder another three or fours beers -- not to mention all those girly umbrella drinks his fan club had provided -- had resulted in...well, resulted in what it did. "My brother is the saddest, sorriest, weakest lightweight in the world."

"'m not," Sam mumbled.

When Dean looked back down, Sam had the sock gripped in his toes. Well, at least being hungover didn't affect his fine motor skills. That was something.

It took him a minute or two to absorb this new and highly disturbing information about his little brother, but Dean finally remembered that this was supposed to be a lesson. He held up a fourth finger.

"Rule four," he said, waiting until Sam looked up, "when you're in a bar called the Texas Longhorn Roadhouse Saloon and you're the only dude in the place without a Stetson and a silver belt buckle, it's probably best if you try real hard not to make fun of country music."

"Your fault. You picked the place." Sam rubbed his shoulder absently, perhaps recalling the friendly way in which Tex and Slim had challenged his musical criticism by use of a chair and an electric Budweiser sign. Dean didn't allow himself to wince sympathetically, thinking of the splinters he'd picked out of his own skin earlier that morning.

"And rule five: let's talk about karaoke."

Silence.

Outside, one of the neighbors was starting up his lawnmower, and somebody else had a table saw going. The soft whisper of a sprinkler system coursed through the air. Birds twittered happily in the sunshine, and fat bees no doubt buzzed lazily from dandelion to dandelion on the lawn.

"Um...did I really--"

"Yes."

"With the--"

"Yep."

"But I didn't--"

"Yeah, you did."

"And I--"

"Definitely."

"Oh, _fuck_." Sam fell back against the wall, his head hitting the plaster so hard one of those damn plaques he was always bringing home -- spelling bee winner, geography champ, king of the geeks, whatever -- fell off its tack and struck his shoulder on the way down. He winced and scowled, reaching up to rub both the back of his head and his arm at the same time, looking something like a pink, overgrown spider with a bird's nest on its head.

"Dude, I'm telling you," Dean said, "I was surprised. I mean, I was watching you."

The whole bar had been watching him, everyone from the ghoulish bartender to Tex and Slim to Property of Jethro and her cackling friends. Who had, Dean recalled with an inward grimace, been sitting altogether too close to Dean and had made altogether too many comments about Sam's ass and the cute way he, uh, _gripped_ the microphone, horrifying words that Dean was quite sure no amount of alcohol or bleach or exorcisms would ever banish from his brain.

"I was watching you," he repeated, giving a low whistle, "and, man, you never glanced at the screen _once_. You knew all the words."

Sam was looking down again, but his lips twitched, like maybe he was trying not to smile.

Or trying not to vomit. It was hard to tell.

"_All_ the words," Dean said, shaking his head in awe. "Look, man, I don't want to know the details, 'cause I've heard the rumors about those pasty-faced drama club kids you hang out with--"

"Ha ha, very funny."

"--and maybe it's none of my business, but you gotta tell me: where the hell did you learn all the words to 'I Will Survive' good enough to belt it our without missing a beat while three sheets to the wind?"

Sam looked up, and there was that wicked gleam in his eye, the one that usually warned Dean he was about to put salt in his coffee or find shaving cream on the toilet seat.

"It's my secret," Sam said solemnly. "I'll never tell."

Then he cracked up. He doubled over with laughter, clutching his stomach and rolling around like a roly-poly on the bed, his face even redder than before, gasping out, "I can't...believe...you made me--"

"Hey! I didn't make you do anything."

"--_do_ that! I'm going to...to fucking _kill_ you!"

Dean stood up, laughing and shaking his head. "Yeah, I'm real scared, big guy."

"I swear, I will." Sam took a few deep breaths, adjusted his pillow under his head, and fixed Dean with an unconvincing glare. "When you least suspect it."

"Like next weekend, when we go out again?"

Sam's smile faltered. "Next weekend?"

Dean gave Sam an enthusiastic thumbs up. "Sounds like a plan!"

Then he stepped into the hallway and shut the door behind him. He started down the steps and made it to the kitchen before stopping and going back up.

Opening the bedroom door just enough to stick his head in, Dean said, "Drink water. You'll feel better."

There was no reply except for Sam's snores, resumed with twice their previous force.

Dean shut the door again and pounded down the steps. He paused in the kitchen for a swig of water and went out to the garage, wheeled the lawnmower onto the driveway. He made sure he was right under the bedroom window before pulling the starter. Never let it be said that he was an unfair brother.

He would tell Sam about the pictures later.


End file.
